CPU Performance

The average CoreMark score for the m3 instances are tabulated as follows:

Instance Type

CoreMark

Score

Std Dev

Std Dev as %

CoreMark /$ per hour

m3.medium

6879.731

30.062

0.4369

60882.577

m3.large

19539.593

101.749

0.5207

86842.639

m3.xlarge

36699.549

75.971

0.2070

81554.553

m3.2xlarge

73522.869

579.416

0.788

81692.077

The following graph shows the CoreMark score for the m3 instances:

It’s pretty clear that the CoreMark score per dollar is off the charts for m3.large. This means that it offers the best performance per dollar.

Disk Bandwidth

FIO, a tool for benchmarking and stress testing IO, was used to analyze the disk bandwidth of m3 instances. Read the experiment setup here: FIO setup.

Four IO operations were benchmarked using the tool. The operations include:

Sequential Read

Sequential Write

Sequential Read-Write Mix

Random Read-Write Mix

Instance Type

FIO - Bandwidth

FIO / $ per hour

m3.medium

44690.956

395495.1915

m3.large

100306.234

445805.4883

m3.xlarge

107426.631

238725.8486

m3.2xlarge

70758.077

78620.0860

As you can see in the graphs, m3.large offers the best FIO performance per dollar. However, one major con is that m3.large has limited memory in it’s SSD drive. As a result, that may not be suitable for larger applications.

Network Performance

A common concern of any new cloud (AWS) adopter is the network performance. Using Iperf, the industry standard network benchmarking tool, we measured the bandwidths of each of the m3 instance type. Read the experiment setup here:IPerf tool setup.

Instance Type

Bandwidth (Mbps)

Std Deviation as %

m3.medium

391.0000

0.0000

m3.large

723.0000

0.0583

m3.xlarge

1,116.1600

0.0000

m3.2xlarge

1,116.1600

0.0000

From the graph, you can note that m3.xlarge and m3.2xlarge perform better. An interesting observation is that the network bandwidth for m3.xlarge and m3.2xlarge has a ceiling and they were restricted to approximately 1.09 Gbps. This is evident because the standard deviation for these instance types is nearly zero.

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